


Separation Anxiety

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eight crazy nights, Gen, Season 8, fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the prompt: When Cas comes back, Sam thinks his presence might make Dean more willing to let Sam stop hunting and live his normal life--but instead, Dean just seems to hold onto them both more tightly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Separation Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serrico (JayneL)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/gifts).



“Where’s Dean?” Sam asked when Castiel came out of the room alone, bearing a bag full of what Sam desperately hoped was dinner. (They’d missed lunch, and Sam would’ve eaten Castiel’s arm if he’d been surer it would regenerate.) He didn’t mean his question to sound like mirror-image Dean, but Dean had been stuck so tight to both of them that it was flat-out disturbing to be outside of his line of sight. Great, now Dean’s anxieties were rubbing off on him, because what Sam really needed was another set of traumas.

“He’s asleep,” Castiel said, and before Sam could express any surprise at that, continued, “I dissolved two sleeping pills into his beer. The warning label counsels against mixing the pills with alcohol, but I felt it worth the risk.”

Sam couldn’t disagree. Dean needed a rest, and Heaven—or at least Castiel—knew that Sam needed a rest from Dean. “I don’t know what to do about him,” Sam confessed. He understood that, even if Dean had been willing to let him go, he couldn’t just leave Dean out on the road with Castiel, who had never been able to restrain Dean from his dumber impulses and didn’t look to be starting now. But Dean seemed to go further retrograde every time Sam tried to have an honest discussion about what the hell they were doing, and it was more frustrating than it had been when he’d been a teenager—at least then, he’d had the arrogance to think that Dean would see reason once Sam showed him that another life was possible.

“Perhaps,” Castiel said, handing Sam a hamburger—Elevation, Sam recognized, a concession to Sam’s interest in healthy eating—“it would be easier if you were not thinking in terms of doing anything ‘about’ him.”

Sam snorted. “So you think he’s right? That I betrayed him, and that I’m not on his side?”

Castiel turned his own burger around until he found what was apparently the correct angle for consumption. He took a few bites, not hurrying, before he answered. “Not at all, Sam. I believe he feels inadequate, and that he is protecting himself by thinking of Purgatory as a place where he was at his best because he was an efficient and remorseless killer of things that deserved to be killed. A corrective to his time in Hell, in a way.”

Sam ate, though he wasn’t as hungry any more. “I’ll be honest, Cas, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”

“Your daytime television would suggest that a reminder that you love him would be in order. I’m told that words can, at times, be as important as deeds.”

Sam didn’t know whether to laugh or beat his head against the hood of the Impala. “Dean isn’t … he’s not really normal that way.”

Castiel tilted his head and was suddenly very much like the frightening creature whose knowledge spanned far greater planes Sam remembered from earlier years. “I believe you’re entirely mistaken. That may be the only way in which Dean is, in your terms, ‘normal.’”

The one thing Sam had learned from all his disasters was that he rarely knew as much as he thought he did. Hard to remember, especially when it came to Dean, but humility never hurt. He let himself consider Castiel’s idea. Dean didn’t just think that Sam had betrayed him, he thought that Sam was planning another abandonment. All Sam’s imagined sentences were ‘I love you, but …’ and there was no way that Dean would hear the first part.

“Fries?” Castiel offered, and Sam shook his head. “Dean says they’re no good cold,” Castiel said, looking into the grease-spotted bag. “To leave them would seem wasteful, but I don’t think I want fries. I think … I want another hamburger.”

He blipped out, evidently in search of another hamburger. Sam contemplated the abandoned fries. Dean was right about letting them get cold. He reached out and grabbed a few.

Castiel was learning to take what he wanted. It helped that what he wanted didn’t require a house and a college degree, but that wasn’t the whole point.

Hunting had taken too much from him. It had stolen every dream he’d ever had. It had stolen Dean, time and again. I love you, he thought, the words much easier when private, and I can’t stand to watch you throw yourself into danger.

The motel door slammed open, and Dean staggered out, one unsteady hand on the gun in the back of his jeans. “Sam?” he croaked.

Sam didn’t know whether Dean had figured it out and made himself throw up the pills, or whether he’d fought through the drugs on sheer stubbornness. It didn’t matter; Sam got up and went to keep his brother from falling down. “Hey,” he said, detaching Dean’s hand from the grip of the gun. “You okay?”

Stupid question. It was probably the drugs and the dizziness that made Dean blink up at him, pupils wide and bottomless, and say, “You were gone.”

“I’m right here,” Sam told him, and for once there was no bitterness in it. “Here, you hungry? There’s fries,” like tempting a tantrum-ready kid.

Dean shook his head, slowly. “Where’s Cas?”

“Getting more burgers,” Sam explained. He got his arm more firmly around Dean’s shoulders and led him over to the Impala. “I got you,” he said, detaching Dean’s clutching fingers from the front of his shirt.

Dean’s eyes were heavy-lidded as he sank down on the hood, barely avoiding squashing the fries. “I don’t feel so good,” he admitted.

“Yeah, kind of got that,” Sam said. “Hey, Dean?”

“Unh?” Dean was trying to stay alert, that post-Purgatory hyperawareness, but it was alternating with waves of exhaustion. He was in no condition for a real conversation. But then, he never was.

Sam swallowed. “You’re not allowed to laugh.”

Dean’s face hardened for a second—fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me—then blurred into confusion.

“I love you,” Sam said. Admitting he’d been prompted would do no good and might backfire; if it worked, he’d thank Castiel later. “I love you, and I want you to let me hold on to you my way. Maybe that means we find a home base, maybe that means we cut down on hunting once we deal with Crowley. I don’t know what I want, but I know I want to do it with you. Just, man, you gotta ease up on me, okay? We’re both fucked up. I’ll try to cut you some slack, but I need you to do the same with me.”

Dean’s brows scrunched up. Even fully sober, he probably wouldn’t have followed Sam all the way. Half the time it seemed like what Sam called yellow was what Dean called red.

“Uh-oh,” Dean said, and then he leaned to the side and vomited. Sam was kind of impressed that he’d managed to get out of range of the car and also not fallen over—but then Dean would’ve made an extra effort with the Impala at risk. Sam was also going to have to consult with Castiel on what kinds of drugs Dean shouldn’t be given.

Dean spat, and cursed. Sam handed him Sam’s own soda, which was mostly ice slush at this point, but he doubted Dean would have the energy to bitch. Dean took a sip and spat again.

Well, that was a pretty clear signal from the universe that Castiel had no fucking clue what to do with Dean, like every other sentient being they’d encountered.

Dean mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said, me too, asshole,” Dean snapped, clearly under the impression that Sam had heard perfectly well. “For the record,” he said and had to pause to catch his breath, “that slack had better mean you leave a note when you fuck off somewhere. You too,” he said, jabbing a finger at Castiel—Sam hadn’t even noticed his return, so caught up in Dean. “Now,” he said, standing and wobbling until Sam stood and took his arm again, “I’m going to go pass out. If you try to be here when I get up, I’ll try to let you take a piss without stalking you.”

With that, and with the slow dignity of the highly altered, he made his way back to the motel room; he hadn’t bothered to close the door on his way out.

“That seemed to go well,” Castiel said.

Sam eyed him: he was never a hundred percent sure just how much human nuance the angel got. If this was Castiel’s fucked-up sense of humor—

Well, then, Sam figured he’d learned it from Dean, so it wasn’t as if Sam wasn’t used to it.

“Maybe,” he said. He tried not to hope too much any more. (Yeah, when he said he was fucked up, it wasn’t just an appeal to Dean’s sense of brotherly equality.) “You ready to head in?”

“I think I’ll walk under the stars for a while, contemplating the fractal grandeur of the universe.”

Sam didn’t blink. That made a lot more sense than the bee thing. “Okay,” he said. “Have a good time.”

When he went inside to continue researching, Dean was already passed out lengthwise across one of the beds, boots still on. Something caught Sam’s eye—there was a note in Dean’s hand, already crumpled. Sam didn’t recognize Castiel’s handwriting, but it looked like the angel had taken Dean seriously.

And when, the next day, Sam saw Dean sneak the note into the shoebox at the back of the Impala that they used to hold the scant records of their lives, that unwilling spark of hope inside him flared just a bit higher. They weren’t fixed. But, just maybe, they could find their way to the same road again and find out where it led.


End file.
